Weekly Motivational Moments with Eric Vickery: Learn how the use of overhear psychology plays a role in effective communication and increasing case acceptance.
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About Eric Vickery
Eric holds a degree in business administration and brings a strong business and systems approach to his consulting. His initiation into the field of dentistry was in the area of office management. He managed dental practices for over ten years and has been consulting over 250 offices nationwide since 2001.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:03
Hi friends, welcome to your weekly motivational moments with Eric Vickery, president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy. This week, I want to talk to you about Overhear Psychology. It’s a system many of you are familiar with and it’s our process or system for helping patients co-diagnose and buy into that condition. So last week we talked about the 95-5 rule, the 95% that your communication is focused on is conditions and consequences.
00:30
Well, the best place to do that is during the clinical exam. Interval photos, all those things we talked about. So when you’re using over here psychology, you’re selling the condition and while you’re doing this, you’re remembering to eliminate killer words that we talked about before. And the patient is really able to hear, understand and co-diagnose in a way that works for them. It’s never good when the patient doesn’t understand the condition.
00:59
They have to understand it. People don’t buy a solution to a problem they don’t perceive to have. So for them to perceive the problem will then allow us the ability to get them to buy into a solution to that. That 95 slash five, the slash in the middle. How concerned are you with this problem? Well, if they’re not concerned about it, they’re not buying into the five. So over here, psychology is where you really get buy in for anybody who’s on the fence when it comes to moving forward with recommendations.
01:29
And you don’t know they’re on the fence until later when you say, do you wanna move forward with this? And they go, yeah, it’s not really bothering me. I think I’m gonna wait. So where you solve this, chair side, don’t do this. This is your key verbal skill to be listening for this week. If you’re a doctor calling out or hygienist calling out limiting terms, things they can’t understand like this to your assistant. So Ricky Bobby, we’re gonna start on the upper right with tooth number two. And Megan, the assistant’s gonna chart.
01:59
All thirds are missing and number two has an MODL amalgam with defective margins and a class five on that buckle. Let’s do a crown and a crown buildup on that tooth. All right, tooth number three, four, whatever it is. As you listen to that, many of you thought, okay, that makes sense. I understand what you’re saying with the amalgam, this and all of that, class five, whatever. Okay, a bunch of mumbo jumbo. I don’t know what it means. But the patient doesn’t understand any of that.
02:27
And in fact, the only thing they understand is when you said crown buildup and crown. So you’re overhearing what you guys are saying, the patient’s overhearing what you’re saying, and what they’re only able to decipher is the word crown buildup and crown. And what do they translate that into? What does that mean to them when they hear crown? Go ahead. Yeah, money. They hear crown and they think money. So let’s go back in time, rewind it, do this the right way. And in this, we’re gonna remember to use implication questions.
02:57
Couple weeks back we talked about questions and we said, there’s gonna be a place and time for implication questions. You imply the consequence of the condition that’s coming. So you’ll hear that in this example. And then this is the verbal skill for this week for you to work on. So Megan, for Ricky Bobby on the upper right, in the back, I see here that there are no wisdom teeth present. So Ricky Bobby, you had your wisdom teeth removed or they never came in and they have a conversation about that. All right, so thirds are missing.
03:27
Tooth number two, there’s an MODL amalgam with defective margins. There’s a large old metal filling that has broken down two structures, fractures off this tooth on the mesial and the distal from the middle to the front and from the middle to the back, fracture lines here. I think we see that, yeah, it’s on the camera here, the photo that we took. I’m concerned, Megan, about the decay underneath that old metal filling. In fact, there’s a gap between the filling and the tooth, allowing decay to work its way down in towards the center of the tooth.
03:57
Now we need to make sure we catch this decay before it hits the nerve, Megan. So, Ricky Bobby, has this tooth started to hurt you yet? And immediately you say, no, not bothering me. Okay, have you ever had a toothache before? Nope, nothing to see here, doc, keep moving. Okay, so have you ever heard of a root canal before? Yeah, why? That’s why you wanna catch this decay before it hits the nerve of the tooth. That’s what creates a toothache, requiring a root canal. I’m glad it’s not bothering you. That means we can do something before it’s too late. All right, tooth number four. Oh, pssh, back up. Then I would say,
04:27
Foundation full coverage, tooth number four. And then I’m calling out the treatment in disguise. So does it take more time? Yes, because the answer always lies in effective communication, not just communication. So I’m being more effective in this example than the prior example. So this week, your verbal skill of the week is to go out and use your over here while eliminating your killer words, while using implication questions, while vividly describing what’s going on.
04:55
and disguising the treatment so it doesn’t sound like dollar signs. All right guys, go make it a great week!
05:03
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
